Heart of Darkness

What is it with me and classics? I am beginning to get a little bit distressed by this now. Apart from Brideshead Revisited none of the ones I have tried this year have set my literary heart a flutter so far. This I think has to be my least favourite of the classics, I simply didn’t get it. I can’t pretend that I did, I just didn’t.

I did think some of the prose was simply stunning, but sadly I couldn’t put it into context, I couldn’t work out who the narrator was for a few pages which I found most disconcerting. The narrator is Marlow and he is telling his crew of a voyage he once took (this took me three re-reads to figure out – I know you should try with a book but there is trying and there is a trying book, this was the latter) travelling to the heart of an African continent to find the dictator Kurtz.

The journey he goes on opens his eyes to the true situation in Africa and also is a journey into the human mind… fallen asleep yet? I almost did. The good thing about this book was that it was short. I am wondering if I need to re-read this one day as maybe I will take more from it, I seriously doubt it though.